Tinuviel
by AmazingGraceless
Summary: [TROS spoilers] Rey storms the afterlife to get her boyfriend back. A companion piece to "The Children of the Stars."


For the first time since her adventures began, Rey set foot onto the desert sands of Jakku. The desert had not changed since Rey had left. Sands of time covered all evidence of change and time's passing. The Star Destroyers sank, slowly but surely. The scavengers still fought and scrapped over the remains of a war that should have died long ago.

Rey glanced back at Chewbacca, and smiled. "I'll just be a minute— it'd be best if you watched the ship," she advised. "Unkar Plutt is probably still looking for it."

Chewbacca, of course, had his own ideas about staying behind and voiced them in a series of roars and grumbles, but ultimately obeyed. But not because of Plutt, no. He could tell, in that way that does not require the Force, that this was something Rey had to do on her own. She had been vague, about her objectives for returning to Jakku. It was about closure and peace, though, he could infer that much.

Rey pulled an old dry leather-bound book with real flimsi sheets as she stepped out into the late Jakkuvian afternoon. She had to read now, while there was still light in this world. The book was of her own making, scrawled aubresh and childish drawings depicting the ins and outs of her daily life on Jakku.

Her hazel eyes lingered on certain memories over others— especially references to her parents. How she had tried so hard to hide the truth from herself! Yet there were small details here and there, turns of phrase, that revealed the truth.

But Rey was not walking into the desert with merely a book for a trip down memory lane, or to merely try and make peace with her dreadful childhood. No, Rey was done looking back to the past. This was an act of forging her own future.

By the time she was out by the old Star Destroyer, she had found the piece of evidence she recalled. A mention of the old Imperial outposts, of the old men who wandered the canyon it was located in now, gone mad without purpose or orders from their commanders.

What a fool Rey had been, she realized as she set out to the canyon. No one ventured into it because of the raving old men— but in retrospect, it was a clue she should have sought out earlier. If only she'd thought of it. Because when she mentioned the old outpost to Artoo, the droid informed her that it was an observatory set up by Emperor Palpatine himself.

Her grandfather himself had been to Jakku, and had left something there.

That cued another memory, of an old legend she heard from the people of Niima Outpost. That Jakku used to be green. That the world once had rain and was as beautiful as Jakku. That is wasn't so cold. Oceans used to span where the sinking fields were now.

But something had gone wrong. Every village had their variant of the story. That a tragedy of some kind happened. Perhaps it was as simple as star-crossed lovers. Or maybe it was that a Sith Lord came. Or the people were too complacent, too greedy— and destroyed it all.

Whatever the reason, the land punished the people of Jakku by dying. But the legend spoke of hope— that the heart of the planet still had the capacity for life. If only the people of Jakku would show true, compassionate love towards one another, they could restart the planet's heart.

Not that that would ever happen, Rey had always thought. They were still too selfish, too greedy on Jakku. Besides, with all she'd seen of war, she wasn't sure that the world could be that fairytale sort of kind to one another.

Then again, that was what spurred her mission, wasn't it? Because one man had chosen to be kind when he didn't have to, when she chose to forgive and lay her armor down at the most crucial moment. Because a boy and a girl had chosen to love each other— against all odds and common sense.

She just had to defy the stars one more time and rewrite the final chapter of her destiny. This was not her ending, alone back where she started, just in a different desert with twin suns and twin moons.

No, that ending was missing half of its engine. And she was going to get it back.

At first, she'd occupied herself in reconstructing the Skywalker homestead— but bigger, this time. It would act as the Praxeum, her Jedi Academy. Finn and Jannah would be among the first of her students. They now were touring with their father to find others in the galaxy who wanted to learn the ways of the Jedi.

But it would be different this time. There would be love and emotion, the light and the dark in the Jedi this time.

In her studies, for creating this new Order, however, Rey had stumbled across old Jedi abilities. Such as being able to flow-walk. She'd thought that would work— but had seen many cautions against it— few had made it work the way she'd wanted.

Besides, she'd spent too much time reliving the past, anyway.

That's when she came across the information about the World Between Worlds. It was between light and dark, life and death, right-doing and wrong-doing.

_I'll meet you there, _Rey promised, trying to pass the message through their bonds. She'd neither heard nor felt a response, but all the same she was certain he'd received it. She just knew. In the same way that Chewbacca knew this was a task for her alone.

The sun was sinking into the dunes by the time she'd reached the observatory. Beyond it, however, was the nexus in the Force— a portal of light.

As soon as she laid eyes on it, she knew that it was what she was looking for.

Her lightsaber hung on her hip, right beside Han Solo's blaster. Her staff still hung on her back, shorter than it used to be.

She put the book back into her pouch, securing it closed. As she approached the light, she took a deep breath. This was it, the time she was waiting for.

Without a second longer of hesitation, she jumped.

And then she was between the worlds. Whispers that sounded familiar, that she didn't quite comprehend, echoed all around her. It was dark, with with trails of light creating an odd globe. Doorways, shaped like triangles, were connected to the paths.

Rey stood there, analyzing and admiring it for a moment.

Then she took out her lightsaber, a bright golden yellow.

"Where is he?" Rey demanded. "Where is the man I love?"

The words tasted strange on her tongue— but she liked the feel and sound of them all the same. For so long, she'd had no one. But now she was determined that no one, not even death, would take the man she loved from her.

The darkness seemed to laugh at her, doing nothing.

Rey's rage was tempered, like durosteel. Channeled into the lightning crackling beneath her skin, begging to escape. Her darkness, her rage— unhealthy, it would consume her. But this was different— it was channeling it for a greater purpose.

For love.

"I won't beg," she promised. "And I won't ask again. Give me Ben Solo, alive."

The or-else part was unspoken, but felt all the same.

Rey would not be played with, by a bunch of Gods, or the Force, or whatever lurked here.

She only had to count to three.

Then, a triangle-shaped doorway appeared. Through it, Rey glimpsed Exogol on that terrible night, a vision of her crying over Ben Solo's corpse before it disappeared—-

And fell, into the World Between Worlds.

Ben fell onto the white path, and scrambled to his feet. For a moment, he looked afraid as he turned around.

"No, no," he murmured, looking back to the doorway— closed now. "You can't be dead, you can't—"

"I'm not dead." Rey smiled and offered him her hand, this time. "I'm alive— and you can be, too. Come on, Ben, it's time to go home."

Without hesitation, he took her hand, smiling back. Rey looked up at the darkness. "Thank you, whoever you are."

Then she and Ben exited the World Between Worlds, under a desert moon.

* * *

**AN: This story is a companion piece to ****_The Children of the Stars_****. You do not need to read that fic, though, to understand this one. Rather, I realized that in _The Children of the Stars_, I might never get around to explaining how Ben survived, since _The Rise of Skywalker _is meant to have happened in that timeline. I think if they do it in canon, they'll do it ala Luthien Tinuviel in the _Silmarillion_— Rey will be just such a badass that death itself will surrender when she comes storming into the World Between Worlds. Hence, my draft of it. **

**One extra note— Jannah apparently is supposed to be Lando's daughter— why they didn't say this in the movie and not the visual guide, I don't know. But I've always suspected Finn would end up Jannah's brother, and I like the idea of the Calrissian clan, so yeah. Also, since Jannah was rumored to be in the most likely fictional alternate ending in which Ben lives, I decided she and Finn are Force-sensitive siblings.**

**I hope you enjoyed!**


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